WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund cut its global growth forecast and urged European policy makers to use “aggressive” monetary policy as a second year of contraction leaves the euro area’s recovery lagging behind the rest of the world.

The global economy will expand 3.3 percent this year, less than the 3.5 percent forecast in January, after 3.2 percent growth in 2012, the Washington-based fund said Tuesday, cutting its prediction for this year a fourth consecutive time. The Washington-based IMF sees the 17-country euro area shrinking 0.3 percent, compared with a 0.2 percent retreat in January, with France joining Spain and Italy in contracting.

“The main challenge is still very much in Europe,” IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard said in a recorded statement released with the fund’s World Economic Outlook. “Europe should do everything it can to strengthen private demand. What this means is aggressive monetary policy and what this means is getting the financial system to be stronger — it’s still not in great shape.”

As central banks in U.S. and Japan deploy unconventional policies such as asset purchases to rouse demand, pressure is mounting on the European Central Bank to do more. The IMF report describes a “three-speed” recovery led by emerging markets including China, with the U.S. forging ahead and Europe trailing after fighting a debt crisis that has forced bailouts of five countries in the region.

While a 50 percent chance of a recession in the euro region is the most immediate threat to global growth, failure to devise debt-reduction plans in the U.S. and Japan over the medium term would also have consequences, according to the report.

Japan’s plans for fiscal stimulus and record monetary easing were reflected in the fund’s new forecasts for the world’s third-largest economy, which were raised to 1.6 percent this year from 1.2 percent and 1.4 percent in 2014 from 0.7 percent.

The U.S. growth projection was trimmed to 1.9 percent, from 2 percent in January to incorporate the expected impact of across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.

“There appears to be a growing bifurcation between the United States on one hand and the euro area on the other,” Blanchard wrote in a foreword to the report. “Given the strong interconnections between countries, an uneven recovery is also a dangerous one.”

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